Pastry shop proprietor has French roots but diverse baking repertoire

At first glance, Belle Pastry, 5115 Spring Mountain Road, Suite 225, may appear to be a French bakery. It sells Napoleons and petits fours, and its founder has a French-sounding name ---- Jean-Claude Ferré. He was trained in Paris.

But it's not a French bakery. Perhaps to underscore that fact, it's located along the Chinatown corridor, tucked into the western end of a shopping center surrounded by Malaysian and Thai eateries.

"It's not a French bakery," said Toom Valailuk Ratnapinda Ferré, co-owner and a chef in her own right. "People know Jean-Claude as a French chef. He had his shop since he was in Alaska (and) that was called a pastry shop, not a French bakery, because he served all kinds of bread and pastries, not only French-style."

She listed off the various offerings that have no French connection ---- stollen is a traditional German bread for Christmas, black forest cake is an English/German/American pastry, and the cinnamon roll is an American bread-style.

"We would like everybody to know us as a place where they can find a variety of delicious pastry made by a French chef," Toom Ferré said.

Most people come for the croissants, she said. In a blind taste test, their croissant was voted No. 1 in Washington state.

"We use good quality butter only, no oil," she said, bringing up another bone of contention. "We don't keep things overnight. Everything that's left over (is) garbage. Make a new one. Pastry ---- we never sell it day old."

She said she gets a list every morning of the quantities sold, which helps determine how many of each item are made that day. The idea is to match production to sales. She said she'd rather run out of an item than sell something left over from the day before.

"If I'm a patron, and I eat food, and it's not good, I'll never come back," she said. "So we maintain that (freshness)."

Samples are offered daily to help patrons decide what they want or to try something new. Breakfast pastries, such as almond croissant, pain au chocolat, raspberry cream cheese croissant and bear claws, have already secured Belle Pastry a faithful following.

"I like it; it's the best," said Tina Thanongsinh, a patron who found the shop a month ago while driving past. "We like it ---- no, not just like it, we love it. ... We asked our friends to come here and try things, too."

The 2,000-square-foot shop features dark wood cabinetry, brick walls and an arched window for seeing into the kitchen. An eat-in portion offers lunch fare such as salads, croissant sandwiches and quiche. Specialty coffees are brewed to order.

Toom Ferré said the key to success is "to be friendly, to be nice. That's the key I learned from my husband.

"He never thought of another bakery that opened up as the competition, never. He'd walk in and say, 'I am a pastry chef. Is there anything I can do to help?' Because, he said, in France, everywhere is a bakery. It's not a competitor. They help each other. If your oven broke down, you'd go next door. 'Can I borrow your oven?' That's what he told me. He was trained like that."

Jean-Claude Ferré grew up in Normandy. At 14, he left home to enter an apprenticeship as a chef in Paris, where his pastries took first place in a competition. He worked under renowned master chocolate maker Roland Stauss for four years in Switzerland.

In 1977, he opened his first pastry shop in Pré-en-Pail, France. His profession allowed him to move around, and he headed to Saudi Arabia, eventually ending up in Anchorage, Alaska. There he opened and co-owned the wholesale bakery Crazy Croissants, which supplied product to major companies.

In 1991, he moved to Mercer Island, just east of Seattle, and opened The French Pastry Place. It was followed by a wholesale bakery named The French Confection, which sold his specialties to American Airlines and Air France and various hotels, restaurants and coffee shops throughout the Puget Sound area.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks brought on an economic catastrophe that caused him to close. But Ferré regrouped and opened a new business in 2003, the first Belle Pastry in Bellevue, Wash. A second location in nearby Seattle soon followed.

Meanwhile, Toom, born in Thailand, had become a chef and a professional singer. The two met when a friend of hers suggested they stop by his bakery. She saw firsthand how he had a generous heart, and they began dating. They were married last year.

They decided to move to Las Vegas and bought a house. The plan was to retire. The plan changed when Jean-Claude, 60, realized how bored he would be. They said they haven't regretted their decision to start anew in Nevada.

"Everybody is friendly. I'd never been to Las Vegas (neighborhoods), only the Strip," Toom Ferré said. "Here, I don't feel scared; I don't feel like (people are) strangers."

Belle Pastry is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Monday and is closed Tuesday. For more information, call 702-331-0099 or visit bellepastry.com.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.